Gentlemen, I can speak from experience. For 11 years I operated a copyright department in the Victor Talking Machine Co. We did not have to clear 200 musical compositions a day. We did not have anything like a job as big as that. We had to clear and contract for and undertake to be licensed for 80 musical copyrighted compositions each and every month. It was a job to do that, to hunt up the copyright status of the work, to contact the owner of that copyright, to enter into a proper kind of contract, to have that contract on file, and to prepare the necessary memoranda for the pressing department, the necessary memoranda for the artists and repertoire department, and the necessary memoranda for the accounting department.

It costs the Victor Talking Machine Co. $25,000 a year to operate that department. We did not have an elaborate department. It was not a big department, but it was a necessary department. That expenditure was made before one single, solitary cent was spent in royalties.

Perhaps a radio station could do it much more cheaply than we could do it up at the Victor Co.; how, I do not know, but they may be more skilled at management and administration than I was. Therefore, they may find that they could do it for one-fifth of what I did it for. If they do, it would cost them $5,000 a year instead of $25,000. There are 600 radio stations throughout the United States, and 600 times 5,000 is $3,000,000, and that is what they pay. I say that that is paid for service. That payment is made not for the use of music but for the convenience with which they get their music.

Of course, these men who represent radio are not going to come out and say to you, because they could not honestly do it, that "We think we are paying enough."

I wanted to make that observation because it just seemed to me that this committee ought to have in its consideration some such thought as that, and a realization of just exactly what radio is really getting away with.

I want to touch briefly on the Berne Convention. I think that I am in a very unique position. I can come down here today and tell you gentlemen, "I told you so", because in 1925 I appeared before this committee in opposition to a bill which was designed to take the United States into the International Copyright Union. I bitterly opposed the entry of the United States into the Union at that time and I opposed it on grounds that have not been touched on in these hearings. The opposition to the International Copyright Union here has been based largely on the fact that in Germany certain discriminatory things are being practiced which are detrimental to our interests, and in Italy Il Duce is doing certain things which are inimical to our interests, and in other countries we cannot get the money out of those countries; therefore, they say that we ought not to join the Union now.

I say we ought never join it. It is an un-American principle. It is not the way we copyright. It is not our idea. It is not the thing that we have believed in from the beginning of the United States and prior thereto, in the operation of the colonies.

I say that I do not believe that there is a single legislator in the Halls of Congress today who is naive enough to believe that a Euro

pean country will live up to its treaty obligations. They have not yet. We see Mr. Hitler walking into the Rhineland and taking his army with him in violation of the Versailles treaty. He does not give two hoots and a hurrah for it. He marched in there. And I say thank God we had an intelligent legislator that kept us out of that treaty.

I see Il Duce carrying his army down into Ethopia and invading that country in violation of an announcement of the League of Nations, and causing the League of Nations to be very much disturbed and excited about it. And I say thank God for an intelligent legislator that kept us out of the League of Nations. We are not involved in those things.

It is the same way with this Berne Convention. We would just be trimmed and trimmed and trimmed. We would offer our market, the greatest market in the world, to the exploitation of these foreign nations and get nothing in exchange-and they know how to do it. We lend them money and they do not pay it back, and they laugh at us in every single way. They would be delighted.

Right at the present time, right now, there has been passed in Germany a law by which the German Government has subsidized its printing industry, largely because the great Mr. Hitler is in the publishing business, and they have subsidized the printing industry so that they will underwrite to the extent of 25 percent of the cost of production books which are to be printed for foreign exploitation. Why did they pass it now? They never passed a law until the Duffy bill passed the Senate. They never thought of passing it until the Duffy bill passed the Senate. But they anticipated the United States' becoming a member of the International Copyright Union, and knowing that if it became a member of the International Copyright Union copyright was to be had here without formalities, which included without printing, they were going to dump cheap literature in the American market. That is why they passed it. Japan is already dumping in the American market.

We do not want anything to do with it. The International Copyright Union has a wrong basis. It is not sound in its basis.

There is one other thing that nobody has mentioned in the hearings up-to-date, a thing which I think is of vital importance:

The International Copyright Union is not just a treaty, it has legislative powers. These foreign nations can gather together and decide what the copyright law under the treaty is going to be. If we become a member of the International Copyright Union, and if that should be approved by the Senate, subsequently to the passage of our law, and go into effect at a date after our law goes into effect, then that becomes the supreme law of the land and anybody who claims protection in the United States under the convention, if we should be a member of that convention, is not going to have his case tried under the language of the law that you pass; he is going to have his case tried under the provisions of the International Copyright Union. It is a legislative treaty. We do not want anything to do with that kind of a treaty. I say that regardless of all the things that have been said in this committee before. We want to stay out of the union because it is absolutely un-American.

How do you get into the union? That is another consideration, and I think it is a vital one. There is no initiation fee. There are

no formalities that you use to get into the union. You merely say, "We here in the United States now adhere to the union." That is publicly announced and the decision is filed at the headquarters at Berne. Whether you are in or not you do not know. There is no one who writes back and says, "Now you are a member of the union, and here is the grip and here is the password", and so forth. You do not know that until you go into a foreign court, and when you are in that foreign court and are pleading the convention as the basis for your protection, that court will then say, "Well, now, wait a minute. Let us see your domestic legislation. We do not know whether you are in or not. We do not know whether you have adhered to all of the clauses of the convention or not. We have to go into that."

I tell you that if that domestic legislation is not absolutely 100 percent in harmony with every one of the provisions of the International Copyright Union, the chances are 100 to 1 that the court is going to say, "You have no protection in this court, you are not a member of the union."

Then, every single copyright that America desires to protect abroad and believes that it has protected by virtue of adherence to the union falls into the public domain. It is too big a risk to run, gentlemen. We cannot afford to do it. Do not, under any circumstances, pass any law which would, even in the remotest way, cause entry into the International Copyright Union. Pass those laws which make it clear to the world that we do not want any part of it; we do not want to be in it. It is no good.

I got excited about this. I did not mean to, but I do because I feel so strongly, and I have felt this way for many years. Way back in 1925 in the copyright hearings, from page 345 on for quite a number of pages, there is a statement by me pointing out in detail what we in America believe to be copyright, what we in America believe to be the principle of copyright. Why give it up-why surrender that?

What is this principle? Basically, it is this-I am not going to go into detail. I recommend that you read this. Mr. Lanham has read it and probably recalls my stating it. The other gentlemen of the committee have not read it, but I wish you would. It will give you an idea of what American copyright really is.

In that I point out that copyright has a certain amount of public interest. The only reason that Congress has ever felt justified—the only reason the States before Congress have felt justified in giving to an individual this exclusive right to the enjoyment of the property which he created, in all of its ramifications, and all of the rights which grow out of it, is because in doing so they can induce the gentleman or the lady, as the case may be, to give to the public the benefit of those thoughts, those creative ideas, those intellectual concepts, those artistic developments, which they are capable of giving.

We become a more intelligent nation through the dissemination of knowledge. We become a more cultured nation through the dissemination of art and cultural things. Our forefathers wanted this Nation to become intellectual. They wanted this Nation to become cultural. So they wanted to induce people who had the creative instinct and spark and ability to give of that which they had to the public, so that everybody might be edified and developed. So they put a premium on the copyright, and they said, "Copyright you shall

enjoy upon the publication of your works"; in other words, upon the making of their works public so that everybody could enjoy it. "Do that with it, and then we will give you the enjoyment of all of these rights."

In Europe they do not say that. They say, "Create it, and you have it. You can lock it up in a drawer, and you can do anything with it."

Of course, the answer to that is that people will not do that. But the possibility is that that could be done.

In America we do not like that, and did not like that, so we have always wanted copyright to initiate upon the publication of the work. In the act of Connecticut, which was the first of the copyright acts in the United States, a part of which, I say, has been quoted to you heretofore by Mr. Mills, this proviso was part of the preamble of that act [reading]:

And whereas many persons may through ignorance offend against this act, unless some provision be made whereby the property in every such book as is intended by this act be secured to the proprietor or proprietors thereof may be ascertained, therefore be it enacted that nothing in this act contained shall be construed to extend to subject any person whatsoever to the forfeitures and penalties mentioned unless the title is registered.

"Unless the title is registered", a public record is made of it.

We like registration. We believe that that is an American principle, copyright or publication with notice of copyright and registration, in a duly appointed office for that purpose. That has been the basis of granting copyright in this country from the beginning, and should continue to be the basis even up to the present time.

I am just going to touch very briefly on and high light, if I may, some of the provisions of the bill without quoting them. They have been quoted so much that I am sure you know them just as well as I know them.

The first part of the bill, on page 3, if I remember, says that the right to produce a motion picture shall include the right to exhibit it.

I must say that the men who draft this bill, Dr. McClure, Mr. Brown, Mr. De Wolf, and I do not remember the other gentlemen from the Department of Commerce, are all fine, conscientious men. all men whom I have known a great many years, men whom I have enjoyed and admired; but they are Government men; their life, their career, has been in public service with the Government. They never have sold a copyright, they never have dealt in a single right growing out of a copyright. If they had, they never could have written that. It is the most impractical business thing that could possibly be put into a bill. It is unfair, it is unjust, it is improper, it is wrong from a busness point of view. You just cannot do that.

It sounds all right theoretically, but let us illustrate.

Suppose you say-and you do say that a little later in the billthat the right to make a talking-machine record includes the right to publicly perform it. That is perfectly all right. We who own the copyrights would go down to the Victor Talking Machine Co. and say: "You want to make a record and perform it? Perfectly all right. We will give you that right, but it is going to cost you this much money to do that: It is going to cost you a dollar a record

or $5 a record, or whatever we want to charge, because if you want those two rights combined we will give them to you."

The Victor Co. is going to say, "What? For heaven's sake! We cannot do that. The great bulk of our records is sold to the people in homes who want to use them privately. We are not going to publicly perform them. How are we ever going to know whether the record we make is going to be used publicly or is going to be used privately? Why do you penalize us that way? Why do you not charge the man who is going to perform it the performing fee? Why do you charge us that?"

It is just impractical. You cannot do business that way. The Victor Co. is right. We have no justification for doing that.

If the motion-picture companies want to use a copyrighted piece of music, how are we going to charge them? We do not know, because they do not know in how many theaters that is going to show. It may show in 500 theaters or it may be an enormously popular picture and go into 19,000 or 20,000 theaters. We do not know that to begin with. How are we ever going to fix a price which we could charge.

They are justified when they say, "Why charge us? Why do you charge us for this? Why do you not charge the man that is going to perform it the performance fee? All we want to do is mechanically reproduce it, that is all we want. We do not know now whether this is going into one theater or a thousand theaters. We just do not know. We have no way of fixing it."

And it is true, it is just impractical. We do not know how to deal with it that way, because those two rights do not flow together, although it seems as thought they might.

Theoretically it is fine, and it would be very nice for us who are copyright proprietors to be able to do business that way because we would have so few people with whom we would have to do business. We have now a great number with whom we have to do business. It is scattered all around. It would be nice to be able to concentrate it and work our turn-over that much more rapidly. But it just is not in the cards. That is not the way you sell merchandise. That is an absolutely impractical thing.

I have touched, I think, on the second thing which I have written down here in my memorandum, namely, the question of registration in the United States. They require here no registration for foreign works. That is un-American. I will tell you why they put it in: Yesterday you were told that there is a discrimination between the American author and the foreign author, and there is a discrimination. It is wrong to discriminate, especially in favor of the foreign author. I just cannot see that. I do not see how anybody would have the courage and the nerve to ask an American Congress to do a thing of that sort. But nevertheless that was done. They are going to discriminate in favor of the foreign author and against the American author.

This committee is wise. They have been sitting in copyright hearings for a great many years. These people know that, and knew that it would be very hard for an American Congress to swallow a copyright bill which did not require registration, se they put it in